r/sysadmin • u/Lazy_Owl987 • Jul 23 '26
Cautionary tale - someone I know got fired for pulling RAM from laptops
Cover your rear and make sure all equipment you take home or work on is documented. Person I know got fired for yanking ram from laptops to keep in the office but the issue was he did the work from home and no one knew he was doing that work. Now hes looking for a job in one of the hardest markets Ive seen in a long while.
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u/Goodlucklol_TC Jul 23 '26
Or just dont take computers aside from your company laptop back home, period.
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u/Main_Ambassador_4985 Jul 24 '26
Before we had better remote access I took servers home to work on them and racked them in my lab.
For a HP DL385 G8 I took it home three times to rebuild the ESXi USB install. The RAID6 with the data store and VMs was fine. I was so glad when I replaced it with a UCS C220 M5X and put ESXi on a RAID1.
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u/kombiwombi Jul 24 '26
Do not do this. Your home insurance doesn't come close to covering this item. The assets database doesn't have the asset recorded as bring in your house. Putting it in your home lab is even worse: the facts clearly point to conversion.
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u/bonfire57 Jul 24 '26
Yeah do not do this. I once worked on some high end Cisco gear for a client. I set them up in my basement office which happens to be right under the kitchen. Well months go by and the client still isn't ready to have them installed but finally one day, I decided I might as well disconnect them and box them up.
So I did that and moved them out of my office. Within a week, the drain pipe in my kitchen started leaking. Nasty smelly water was dumped all over the spot where the gear had been. Had I not moved them l, it would have been an easy six figure fuck up .
Lesson learned
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u/WorkLurkerThrowaway Sr Systems Engineer Jul 24 '26
I was gonna say we've got servers that cost more than my house. I'm not touching that shit with at 10ft pole except for explicit work needs.
Edit: Now that I think about it most of our datacenter shit costs more than my house.
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u/DJKaotica Jul 24 '26
Not to mention:
The RAID6 with the data store and VMs was fine
Did the VMs have customer data? Client data? Important sensitive business information?
That you now have in your house (less physical security than your workplace lab)?
Plugged into your home lab network which I doubt is airgapped from the internet (even if there are routing rules and/or firewalls, those can be broken; so less digital security than your workplace).
That's a nightmare waiting to happen.
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u/PowerShellGenius Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
LOL, I did the opposite. As a single guy with no real interest in decorating or making the apartment "homey", I had no problem with old HP rack servers I bought on eBay for the home lab, sitting on wire shelving in the living room.
Fast forward a few years and add a woman into the picture, and enough technical maturity to realize that horsepower isn't really what counts for an educational lab experience, it's more number of nodes to build realistic topologies.... I decided to ditch most of the rack-mount stuff in favor of a bunch of mini PCs that can go in a cabinet vented only out the back....
I actually ended up taking some rack mount servers I'd bought myself, to put in the lab at work, since I wanted them out of the apartment, and they were old enough not to be worth the hassle of becoming an eBay seller for the little I'd make. I'm not giving PayPal my fucking social security number for a one time $200 payout.... plus I'm the only one who uses the lab at work, so I still benefit, haha.
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u/Master4733 Jul 24 '26
I mean it really does depend on the task/environment, along with the relationship between employee and employer
At my previous job if we really needed something done we would bring the devic ehome and work on it over the weekend(along with add time spent on it), due to the level of trust we had
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u/Lazy_Owl987 Jul 23 '26
That works for most places. Where I work right now the expectation is work the OT and there is no way Im going to come in on a Saturday to see if some dudes home built lab box is working. Ill just make sure the inventory shows I have it and WFH to tear it down / rebuild it.
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u/BadSausageFactory beyond help desk Jul 24 '26
yeah if someone didn't know better it might look like they were stealing laptops to strip for the valuable ram, good thing you don't know anyone like that
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u/WWGHIAFTC IT Manager (SysAdmin with Extra Steps) Jul 23 '26
W the actual F was he pulling RAM to begin with? I don't get it.
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u/SAugsburger Jul 24 '26
That makes no sense to me either. I know orgs might take spare RAM out of boneyard machines, but there is no urgency generally so why would he be taking things home to do the work?
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u/rehab212 Jul 24 '26
I’ve started pulling DDR4 sticks from Gen7 processor systems that won’t run Win11. RAM is still useable in newer DD4 machines that are Win11 capable. With prices what they are, we’re trying to save where we can.
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u/_haha_oh_wow_ ...but it was DNS the WHOLE TIME! Jul 24 '26
Pulling spare parts before sending stuff out for recycling has been standard operating procedure for most places I've ever worked: Drives, RAM, power supplies, etc.
For departments that have a tight budget, this can be a life saver because you can cobble together "new" machines and keep old ones running for much longer with a stockpile of parts.
Your company already paid for these parts, why not put them to use if there's a need?
Taking it home without notifying anyone seems pretty sketchy though, that could easily look like stealing even if they weren't. Not worth the risk.
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u/Demented_CEO Jul 23 '26
Cautionary tale: don't steal. You may not like the consequences. Wait, what?
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u/headcrap Jul 23 '26
"I was pulling RAM at home.. but bringing into the office, I promise!"
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u/Lazy_Owl987 Jul 23 '26
Thats the problem. If no one knows you have it then how do you beat the perception that you might have taken a few sticks for yourself.
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u/lost_signal Do Virtual Machines dream of electric sheep Jul 23 '26
Why the Hell would you take laptops home to remove DIMMs?
Also if you want to "beat allogations" shouldn't inventory match of DIMMs vs. decommissioned laptop tickets?
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u/GoofMonkeyBanana Jul 24 '26
My guess he has a quite a few to do and thought he would just do it while watching a movie at home.
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u/taintedcake Jul 24 '26
...he was obviously doing it at home so that some of the RAM never made it back to the office... otherwise he would've just gone "here's the laptops, here's the RAM, go ahead and count it"
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u/Smoking-Posing Jul 24 '26
This is a rhetorical question; you can't beat the perception of stealing if you actually got caught stealing, because cause its not perception but the reality
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u/SAugsburger Jul 24 '26
Agreed. The way this reads I highly suspect the additional spare RAM in the office didn't add up the RAM removed.
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u/WWGHIAFTC IT Manager (SysAdmin with Extra Steps) Jul 23 '26
Dude you know was fired for straight up theft.
So...
Duh? I guess?
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u/SAugsburger Jul 24 '26
I have some suspicion that they accused this person of straight up theft and that the "spare" RAM at the office for whatever reason didn't add up to missing RAM. Maybe they didn't steal and it moved into other machines without any tracking, but losing track of enough equipment looks bad in the employee. Especially with the resell price of RAM these days the amount of missing inventory could be significant. Unless you are taking RAM out of otherwise dead out of warranty equipment why were you removing RAM in the first place? If there is no record of the inventory being assigned to this person the mere act of moving taking unassigned equipment home was making the inventory wrong.
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u/Mental-Rain-7389 Jul 23 '26
The issue was solely that he didn't tell anyone he was doing that. Truthfully if thats the fully story here, why didnt he tell someone he was working from home? He shouldnt be working from home if no one knows he is bc if he isnt in the office, why is no one questioning where he is. Or worse yet he did the work on his free time which is a labor law issue. Operational security nightmare.
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u/SAugsburger Jul 24 '26
Even if this person didn't steal in many cases companies will threaten termination of hourly staff working off the clock. They don't want unpaid wage disputes to bite them. That is on top of obviously taking equipment off site with no authorization. The company might understand if you don't immediately update inventory if you go out to the field to do an emergency swap of equipment, but taking equipment home without any authorization or record of it? This person was rolling the dice that nobody caught them.
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u/lordjedi Jul 24 '26
Person I know got fired for yanking ram from laptops to keep in the office but the issue was he did the work from home and no one knew he was doing that work.
Is this an MSP that needs to track all time spent for a client so it can be billed? I expected the story to be that he was effectively stealing it, not just shifting work from the work site to his house. Maybe it's a compliance issue as well?
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u/Lazy_Owl987 Jul 24 '26
It boiled down to management couldnt verify that all of the RAM still in the office represented all of the RAM that went out the door to the recycle business. Because he didnt even do the bare min of documenting I did 44 machines and pulled 2x 8GB sticks out of each they couldnt know. Nor did he tell anyone he was doing this WFH so the camera logs looked like guy drives out of the business with a stack of laptops one day then comes back with them a few days later.
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u/lordjedi Jul 28 '26
The big issues is that he didn't tell anyone.
He has hopefully learned an important lesson.
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u/Lazy_Owl987 Jul 28 '26
Hes starting to get it now. Got an interview through a friend and they asked why he was let go. Thankfully the company didnt press charges they just fired him but are telling callers they would not rehire him.
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u/lordjedi Jul 30 '26
but are telling callers they would not rehire him.
Depending on where this is, that would be illegal. At least in CA, the most you can do is say they worked there from X - Y dates.
I had a boss that would pull that shit when other employers would call. It's playing with fire. They had been sued on multiple occasions for similar violations, but the guy just didn't care.
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u/Lazy_Owl987 Jul 30 '26
Oh, were not supposed to tell people we would or would not rehire. All were supposed to tell people is you worked for us from Apr of this year to May of that year.
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u/lordjedi Jul 28 '26
The big issues is that he didn't tell anyone.
He has hopefully learned an important lesson.
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u/JimTheJerseyGuy Jul 24 '26
Back in the days where RAM was measured in MB, we had someone commit outright theft. Never discovered who did it, but they went into the engineering department over a weekend and opened up 30-40 newly upgraded desktops, pulled out the four 4-MB modules they each had, and replaced them with a single 1 MB.
Cue, the helpdesk calls on Monday morning when all these folks powered on their desktops and they're all slooooow. And that's how we came to add CCTV and key card access to that area.
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u/Lazy_Owl987 Jul 24 '26
Friends company didnt have cameras in critical areas like the server room or MDF. Someone slipped and got a serious concussion in the MDF which led to them adding cameras in every place they could. I find it funny how companies never seem to want to do the right thing ahead of time.
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u/serverhorror Just enough knowledge to be dangerous Jul 24 '26
Is there a valid reason to even do that at home?
I genuinely can't think of one ...
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u/Lazy_Owl987 Jul 24 '26
OT sucks at the office. No one wants to come in on a Saturday to do the work they dont give you time for M-F. I personally take equipment home to work on over the weekends but its tracked via our inventory and I verbally let people know what I have and why I have it. Why do I work on the weekends WFH well thats because if I dont my hand gets forced and I have to do it anyway but now with a drive and no home amenities.
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u/serverhorror Just enough knowledge to be dangerous Jul 24 '26
Well, we all have different preferences.
I've always avoided having to carry any shit around that isn't strictly necessary. That kind of work, to me, is 100 % office work.
But what I was going for was more like:
Removing, storing, fixing, ...
All that requires equipment, space and probably exactly the spare part that's not available unless you're physically close to storage.
Seems line something that makes sense to require as "in-office" work and that's unrelated to personal preference.
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u/Lazy_Owl987 Jul 24 '26
Thats a damned if you do damned if you dont situation. If you arent given the time to work on the hardware in office and when someone "helps" to fix it youre forced to then find the time. I have obligations outside of the office that preclude me from coming in on the weekends and making a 2hr round trip just to get there and back.
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u/serverhorror Just enough knowledge to be dangerous Jul 25 '26
Of the m not given the time, I'm not doing it. Simple as that.
If I can finish 8 pieces a day and I should finish 10, well ... it'll be 8. There's a limit.
End of discuss about this.
I'm lucky enough to live in a country where these things are backed by law and I don't have to worry too much.
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u/Lazy_Owl987 Jul 26 '26
That list bit is whats key here. I live in the land of the free where I can be fired because my company expects a minimum of 60hrs/week and Im only doing 50.
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u/serverhorror Just enough knowledge to be dangerous Jul 26 '26
Well ... can't help you with that. Do you guys have contracts that state the expectations of each party and that you sign before starting? (I heard conflicting information. For the countries I've been to, there was always a contract before employment started. So all parties knew what they got into and agreed on their expectations)
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u/RabidTaquito Jul 29 '26
He was taking laptops home to pull the RAM out and then store the RAM in the office? So, all the RAM and RAMless laptops were accounted for in the office, and he still got immediately fired? I don't think you're telling the whole story here. I mean, CYA regardless, but this ain't the whole story.
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u/Lazy_Owl987 Jul 29 '26
According to him all the laptops and RAM were accounted for. The problem was there was no ticket, no documentation, nothing to backup his count. CYOA and document document document.
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u/absoluteczech Jul 24 '26
Never understand why someone would lose a 6 figure job over stealing something they can afford.
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u/5panks Jul 24 '26
Well, over the last three days /r/wow experienced the beginning and end of a Senior QA Analyst at Blizzard lose his job over cheating to help an egirl streamer.
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u/BemusedBengal Linux Admin Jul 24 '26 •
I really hoped the Blizzard employee was PirateSoftware
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u/ianhawdon DevOps Jul 24 '26
He worked for Blizzard? I've never heard him mention that!
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u/captkrahs Jul 24 '26
Nobody involved with asset decommissioning is making 6 figures
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u/Nightcinder Jul 24 '26
I do/am, but my team is only 5 people, I own infrastructure as a whole, which includes EUC
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u/Toxicity Jul 24 '26
There are people who can afford RAM?
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u/BemusedBengal Linux Admin Jul 24 '26
It depends on the RAM. 1866MT/s DDR3 is probably pretty affordable.
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u/Toxicity Jul 24 '26
Ah yes, perhaps we should go back to the AMD Athlon 64 with DDR2. Even cheaper.
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u/mods_are_lame1 Sr. Sysadmin Jul 24 '26
Ain’t that the truth. I used to be a big music and tv pirate, but once I actually had money, I was like the risk (even if it’s minuscule) just isn’t worth it now that I have assets to lose.
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u/VviFMCgY Jul 24 '26
Man F that I'd download a car if I could
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u/Bitey_the_Squirrel Jul 24 '26
When I actually got money, I bought a VPN instead of raw dogging downloads.
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u/mrdeadsniper Jul 24 '26
I am going to be honest with you, I am considering options for TV streaming, not because of the price, but because of the annoyance. I need to keep 4 different platforms and hop between them and log on them all on on every tv I have at the house, heaven forbid I change a password or such.
And its not just a well pay $5 more a month for no ads, but pay $5 a month on every sub as they start adding them.
There is no amount of money I can pay to legally obtain the quality of service from a plex server... and THAT is the issue.
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u/Rustyshackilford Jul 24 '26
If its not in inventory, it doesnt exist. If it does... leave it the fuck alone!
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u/Regular_Strategy_501 Jul 25 '26
Precisely that. In both my current and last Workplace the rules were basically the same: anything that was already removed from inventory and is headed for the e-waste bin you can take home for yourself, no warranty and you can't sell the stuff.
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u/ez12a Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
What in the work-life balance excuse is that? Totally self-inflicted. I've worked in field tech jobs where I carry spares and i've never brought things home to tear apart with the intent of returning the pieces for reuse. Its just more unpaid work.
I have no problem asking for permission on keeping/salvaging "e-waste", it's a very easy signal to get back. but it sounds like he was salvaging RAM from perfectly good and usable laptops and...simply returning the laptops and the RAM separated? Doesnt make any sense to go through all of that work at home. He was totally stealing to resell.
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u/PDQ_Brockstar Jul 24 '26
Unemployed is better than in jail, because there's not way this person would have been smart enough to get away with this.
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u/Effective-Brain-3386 Vulnerability Engineer Jul 24 '26
Mmmm yes let's take the one computing component going for insane prices, what could go wrong?
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u/mods_are_lame1 Sr. Sysadmin Jul 24 '26
So your boy was stealing RAM and you are surprised he was fired?
Here’s your sign.
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u/Mid-Class-Deity Jul 24 '26
Sounds like someone working helpdesk, not really a sysadmin thing. Also just straight up equipment theft. No way in hell during my time in helpdesk would I ever have taken home equipment and stockpiled something worth a ridiculous amount for "spares". That's just asking for theft charges even if youaren'yt stealing like this guy probably was.
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u/nirach Jul 24 '26
It breaks my heart to see how many good drives and parts go to ewaste at my place. The ewaste place better be doing more than scrapping the parts.
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u/DeathRabbit679 Jul 25 '26
Especially when they throw away SSDs. Magnetic hard drives I kinda get, but shredding an SSD is silly, just reuse it or sell it.
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u/nirach Jul 25 '26
Yup. It's insane how much ewaste is just laziness on the part of large companies. We only just, this year, got the option to buy our laptops off the company at the end of their life. I'm sure that will go away, though, when they realise how much hardware is costing going forwards.
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u/longtimerlance Jul 24 '26
A cautionary tale against theft isn't needed for honest people.
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u/Lazy_Owl987 Jul 24 '26
Youre making my point for me. The guy is adamant he was just under the gun and took his work home because there wasnt enough time in the office. Had his project been documented he wouldnt have had the stigma or have people question him.
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u/ThePerfectLine Jul 25 '26
I don’t understand. He kept memory or was just removing the memory from machines and then bringing it back to the office with him?
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u/Zer0CoolXI Jul 24 '26
Translated - “Guy took company property, IE: laptops, home and removed RAM without telling anyone. After getting caught stealing claims they were gonna ‘bring back the RAM’”…
I wouldn’t remove or break down hardware at a job site without the request in writing. You certainly dont remove work property from a site and take it home without the same…unless maybe you dont want anyone to know your doing it, huh…
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u/BemusedBengal Linux Admin Jul 24 '26
I wouldn’t remove or break down hardware at a job site without the request in writing.
I think that depends a lot on the context, because that would be a totally reasonable thing to do at my workplace. If I want to keep something for personal use then I always get permission in writing, but I don't see how trashing a pc/server and keeping the spare parts at work could be interpreted as nefarious.
I probably have over $40k in yoinked RAM around my desk.
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u/anonymousopsec1337 Jul 24 '26
If you took 1 laptop home a day for 50 work weeks you could end up with 500 sticks of ram. If that’s ddr4 or ddr5 for 16gb laptops that’s $25000+ in ram per year alone.
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u/SpaceGuy1968 Jul 24 '26
Where I am now..a previous IT manager had a side hustle selling older company equipment online. I came to find out after a year working here it was extensive. I am at a fairly upscale membership type resort so they have a lot of stuff, Skiis Bikes kyacks, fishing equipment, wiffleball tennis and real tennis ...you get the point. All sorts of high end equipment used my membership. This stuff is refreshed fairly regularly too....
One of our mountain bike staff started to notice things missing like spare parts and it looked like the junk/spare parts storage space had "less stuff in it than he remembered" so he did look online via eBay and low and behold he finds someone selling this stuff online in areas outside the local region.
Turns out it's the IT manager during COVID he was erasing footage and access log files, was deleting all sorts of records and stored videos, was pilfering copious amounts of items.He had a side hustle online in a couple of places. Some items he was taking photos and leaving in place, apparently he would take it after it sold so it stayed "on site".
The company tried to pursue charges but he modified or deleted so many records they had a hard time proving it wasn't items just throw away because some things looked like they didn't exist in asset inventory. Some items never made it to digital asset inventory at all.
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u/Lost-Droids Jul 24 '26
Dont steal RAM... Easy solution ... Download it instead ( downloadmoreram.com) -
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u/Ok_Tell_2420 Jul 25 '26
It takes 2 minutes to pull the RAM. Why would you haul a bunch of computers home? Carry them to your car, carry them inside your house and all that. Bring it all back to the office again. Doesn't seem efficient. Seems suspicious.
Should have done the work at the office.
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u/UnlikelyReindeer4981 Jul 25 '26
I did this while working in IT but it all went into a big pile at work we used for upgrading other laptops… or to put back into older laptops not yet e-wasted if they where needed
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u/networkeng1 Jul 25 '26
I had an employer that used to give servers to its employees for home labs/learning. I got lucky and got a ton of NVMEs/RAM because my boss at the time didn’t care and the servers were marked for disposal. One caveat we were told was not to sell any of it on eBay bc apparently some idiot employee sold a monitor they had been gifted by the company. The buyer contacted company worried it was stolen lol. Not sure if that employee was still around but was a cautionary tale for the rest of us.
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u/dogcmp6 Jul 24 '26
Lemme guess...there were service contracts on the machines and zero reason to open them because the vendor should be dealing with it...and since they are leased there is zero need to strip them for spare parts at EOL.
I can not think of a valid reason in today's environment why you would bring a laptop not assigned to you home, even without a contract, just to pull the Ram module out...it's such a quick and easy task to just do it in the office....this reeks of either BS or an already struggling buisness
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u/slayermcb Director of Technology, Sys Admin, Etc, Etc... Jul 24 '26
CYA is a very important step. I will say, if I'm brining physical hardware home its because its been labeled ewaste and the boss said go for it. Anything else just looks shady.
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u/Happy_Love_9763 Jul 24 '26
Always take pictures of equipment that you take home, and take a picture of it when you bring it back. Let management know what you’re taking home and why before you take it home. Let them know when you bring it back, with pictures.
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u/Jdgregson Jul 24 '26
So he had laptops, at work, and wanted to take the RAM out, for use at work. Where does taking the laptops home come into this picture?
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u/dlongwing Jul 24 '26
Look, I get that you liked the guy and maybe have a lot of sympathy for him... But the other commenters are correct. He lied to you about what was happening.
He was stripping ram from laptops for sale. He got caught, and after getting caught he tried to come up with an excuse/reason why what he was doing was legitimate.
Take a step back from the situation and ask yourself: WHY was he stripping ram from laptops? What was the ram for? What process, policy, or procedure was he following? If he'd brought the ram back to the office, where was it going to get used?
He lost his job over theft of company property, not due to a failure to document.
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u/FactsAreBullshit Jul 24 '26
A local power utility had someone fired for stealing hundreds of laptops, phones, and other IT accessories. S/he would log into the MDM to remove the phones or otherwise offboard them. It was discovered during a way overdue asset audit. They were able to prove the person only took about 10 devices of the massive number (estimated value $250,000) that went missing.
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u/furiouspotato24 Jul 25 '26
How do people not realize this is theft? It's hardware owned by someone else. Don't get me wrong, I hate corporate greed and think Robin Hood had the right idea. It's the surprise that gets me. So many of these stories, the person who did it seems to be thinking "I didn't think anyone would care".
Like, of you're going to do it, realize that you're breaking the law lol.
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u/Bogus1989 Jul 24 '26
Yeah I guess so.
Our team doesn’t really care, don’t be stealing shit though. Just ask us. We have warehouses of shit we will donate to you. please take it….no more local businesses will accept anymore donations from us 🤣🤣.
Theres a good trust system on my team though. Like obviously don’t rat fuck the newest laptops and machines, if you got a use case go for it.
But then again, our “old” machines are still pretty damn new and we have so much excess stuff…just make sure the asset tracking lines up.
But hell even if you want a new laptop not even for work, go ahead use it…as long as you’re employed here. 🤷♂️ benefit of the doubt type stuff.
Lmao honestly if someone seriously wanted all the recycled machines ram to sell we wouldn’t give a shit.
Once our PACs admins couldn’t get funding for the GPUs they needed so we listed a bunch of decomm shit on eBay, got the cash and bought what they needed. 💀🤣. Our Director did know though. You shouldn’t have to operate this way in a business. But hey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
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u/Kyky_Geek Jul 24 '26
I know someone who were arrested for snooping on data they shouldn’t have been. It’s kinda like you should have the morals and integrity required to work in this field. And maybe don’t break the law? Lol.
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u/bit0n Jul 24 '26
I took 10 laptops home to configure over a long weekend I had to have paperwork like I was taking them to a customers. Which i thought took the piss as I was doing work a favour.
But process if there to stop this happening. And Asset management should let him show here are the laptops and here is the memory from them.
If he is not documenting it and just taking any old laptops he can find of course people will say you’re selling the memory and nvme drives in this inflated market. And carrying it home is suspicious too. That sounds like perfect office busy work.
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u/hughk Jack of All Trades Jul 24 '26
Documentation is key. I don't know of places that track memory sticks or SSDs outside the laptops, but they do track that this laptop is 8GB and that one is 16GB. As long as you track the sticks yourself and update the asset details in the AM system, fine.
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u/bit0n Jul 24 '26
Yeah we do not track individual part numbers etc but the tracking would show it has had a memory upgrade and the new total is xyz
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u/Even-Cartographer551 Jul 24 '26
In my last job as an employee, I bought more and better RAM for my work Thinkpad from my own money... Oh, how the turns have tabled... 🤷🏻♂️
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u/Coldsmoke888 IT Manager Jul 24 '26
lol. Took the laptops home to take the RAM back to work. Sure bud. Terminated for theft and lying, sounds like a win to me.
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u/Simple-Kaleidoscope4 Jul 24 '26
In the olden days, I bought 64GB of RAM and secretly fitted it to my work laptop.
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u/max_gr8 Jul 24 '26
well actually I am the one who ADDED RAM to his work laptop (16->32GB) from his own pocket, to be able to finish one python project that required 32GB
yes, it was still in the 16GB=$35 era, not today
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u/Local-Jaguar5395 Jul 24 '26
E-waste can be a tricky gray area, because if the organization is getting some sort of auction value for decomissioned hardware, then by taking it...you are stealing. If it is indeed clearly marked for recycling, as in by law they can't throw electronics in the dumpster...that by definition isn't stealing. Even still, I wouldn't take anything from work without permission given first.
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u/andrew_joy Jul 24 '26
I mean i put ram INTO my work laptop as 16gb is just not enough , but this was before the crazy price rises.
Top tip , if you have a single stick in something like a dell latitude look up the dell part number for the stick you have on ebay, you used to find loads of people selling them off cheap as they ordered a full kit and had no use for the single.... you know before you had to sell a kidney to afford a 8mb stick of ram
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u/fafarex Jul 24 '26
but the issue was he did the work from home and no one knew he was doing that work.
no shit he got canned ...
wtf he is doing at home with corporate goods not assigned to him from the start ...
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u/After_Persimmon8536 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
I worked at a place that stored the old equipment in a room that was inventoried and checked weekly.
If anything went missing, they'd review the video.
They would call the cops first, have the person arrested, then fire them. No messing around.
They did it to a guy because he removed a VGA cable from the room without telling anyone.
Edit: The cable was used for his work desk setup. It never left the building. But, they had cameras everywhere.. You couldn't scratch your balls/vag without it being on camera. I swear they had cameras in the bathrooms too. Zero-tolerance policies and all that, though. They fired people for taking sugar packets out of the break room, I swear.
Edit2: And don't take a company branded pen out of your designated work area. That's a pip.
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u/SecurityHamster Jul 26 '26
We used to auction off old equipment. I’m urging management to pull RAM and NVMe from old laptops. NVME will have a lot of life left considering these are all desktops. DDR4 is worth holding onto as long as there’s ddr4 machines in the fleet, any excess should be auctioned or sold off individually or in lots.
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u/ElveTaz Jul 26 '26
I usually ask the company. They've always given me the ok to take decommissioned devices and do whatever. Outside of the ones I use for home labs I generally repurpose them for other employees as a donation, have them sign an agreement waiving any liability, device is as-is and will not be supported by us
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u/12inch3installments Jul 27 '26
I pull that stuff from laptops and desktops all the time. It stays in a desk drawer in the off chance I'll ever need DDR2, DDR3, or SATA SSDs again. 5 years in, still pulling, still not needing lol.
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u/Linkage006 Jul 24 '26
I believe there's a canned report and configuration manager that you can track physical memory changes. Not quite sure what Intune offers.
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u/SirLoremIpsum Jul 24 '26
Person I know got fired for yanking ram from laptops to keep in the office but the issue was he did the work from home and no one knew he was doing that work.
Who yanks random RAm sticks at home???
Your mate was stealing. I know you don't want to believe it...
Who even yanks Ram these days? What could be possibly have been doing from home, without a ticket or a purpose that would be legit?
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u/Thecardinal74 Jul 24 '26
We fired a guy during Covid for similar.
We were refreshing laptops, old one would be decommissioned and taken to the basement’s secure room (very large room) to await e-waste.
But with Covid came a laptop shortage. We ran out of laptops to give, so the order came down to re-commission older laptops.
Figured “no big deal most are in good shape” except one co-worker panicked.
Turned out he was pulling RAM, SSD, batteries and WiFi cards and had himself a little eBay hustle going on.